I would've loved to be able to launch this endeavour before Cohost closes, but I also would've really loved to have launched it at any other point over the last 18+ months, and would have done so if not for multiple payment processors making it incredibly difficult for me to process money, to the point where my day-to-day is spent worrying about what trivial purchase might send my account back into purgatory. (The ETA date I keep throwing around is based on what I'm hoping will be a final resolution of certain Pxypxl issues come December, but it's not like I wasn't already given multiple assurances that my problems were over...)
As of right now, I'm not prepped for a formal reveal, but I didn't want to leave this place without giving yall something, so in addition to the follow-and-forget links found above, I figured I could at least bash out a synopsis for what I'm trying to do, the services I'm trying to provide and the community I want to foster. This'll all go on the website once I go fully public, I guess, but I'm happy to leave it to Cohost for now.
tl;dr: I'm starting a DIY game publishing label that's focused on providing devs with a venue for low-intensity, low-stakes projects, helping veteran devs reintroduce their games to new or international audiences and cultivating an ecosystem for niche subgenres beyond the morass of Steam; I have a few games lined up, and I'd like to sign more.
virtually nobody here has asked me about bsky but virtually nobody still aint nobody, so: while I accept the possibility of being forced onto [sns service xyz] for the sake of promoting other peoples' shit, I have zero personal desire to be on bsky (or anywhere, really) and this week's news changes nothing
Erica @erica 6 hr ago
will you be keeping (or already have) a blog where folks can keep up with you? i've really enjoyed your posts on here and would love to know if you plan on having some kind of written outlet elsewhere to follow!
much appreciated!
the short answer is, idk! the slightly longer answer is that I haven't done the whole "here's where to find me" spiel because I'm undecided on whether life will continue to allow me to justify doing anything that isn't bringing in supplementary income, or whether my disgust for the ever-encroaching pressure on people to commodotise their entire online persona is something I'll be able to swallow, or whether I even still want to be found... but the clock's tickin', so I guess I ought to pick a direction while I can.
for now, I can say this:
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I intend to keep helping out with Shmuplations, Indie Tsushin, etc for as long as is necessary (and I'm disappointed that this place is going under before any real top-down reckoning on the specific cultural fragilities that caused Renkon to leave could occur)
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I've been writing for the Retronauts website for a long-ass time—mostly just weekly roundups of whatever old games are being reissued each week, and largely void of personal takes beyond whatever baseline passive-aggressiveness oozes out when I'm bashing out takes in the early AM, but I've recently been made very aware of the fact that very few people seem to know this is a thing I do and that I ought to mention it more often. I could and probably should be writing over there more regularly on a wider variety of topics, but we'll see.
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people have been in my ear about a personal blog, or newsletter or whatever, for a while; I've brushed 'em off for various reasons ("stuff wot I saw" does not strike me as particularly appealing nor something with much of a through-line, and more niche-focused outlets bring their own baggage and may veer too close to community management for my liking, especially if they're tied to patreon or whatever) but I'm running out of options, frankly, so I might end up biting one bullet or another.
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I'm fucking fantastic at talking myself out of doing stuff and I can't guarantee I won't vacate all the above venues before long, too ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I'll attempt to end things on a more optimistic note: I joined Cohost right as I began umming and ahhing over whether to go ahead with an indie/doujin publishing label in the vein of DIY initiatives like Indiepocalypse and the Japanese Syakerake service, and I've finally decided that it's now or never and that I need to pull the trigger while I still can... so, public announcement, I guess: ALL CITY SLOP SHOP, launching as soon as Paypal/Stripe stop fucking with me (ETA 2/5/25, but let's not count our chickens). I don't know that I'll have so much as a URL to point to by the time this place goes read-only, but I do want to try and at least throw up the mission statement in the next week or so. The games aren't mine but the space I'm attempting to carve out is one that I believe is important, and I hope people are willing to carve it with me.
one last bump, in case this place is locked once I wake up... if it aint, I guess I might have one last Post in me, and if it is... allow ALL CITY SLOP SHOP to park itself in your brain somewhere for the next little while, because I definitely do not have so much as a URL to point anyone towards right now
edit: just in case I run out of time, the placeholder-est of placeholder links
I feel like one of these days I should write something long about the Steam Pilots crowdfunding shitshow, as we in the Anglosphere rarely hear about what happens when Japanese crowdfunding goes wrong.
A very brief summary: ex-Konami composer Motoaki Furukawa did a crowdfund campaign for a shooting game called Steam Pilots meant to invoke some Twinbee nostalgia, even roping in Twinbee/Gaiapolis character designer Shuzilow.HA. Much of the programming was to be done by Pixel, a very small (basically one-man) studio who made indie games like furry STG Horgihugh. Eventually Pixel made public that he wasn't getting paid and was leaving the project, and now nobody knows what the hell Furukawa did with the funds because he hasn't given any details on how things were spent. That's a gross simplification, of course, there are lots of details, but now there are rumblings of a potential class action suit from angry backers. Also, Shuzilow.HA has been pretty publicly dragging Furukawa and his wife/manager/co-conspirator(?) Nanako and it's vicious yet satisfying to see.
I'd heard through contacts long before this went down that Furukawa and Nanako were absolute egotists and miserable to deal with, so I've been watching the situation unfold with interest. Seems like the guy's burned quite a few people over the years and the schadenfreude has come to roost. Hopefully the backers get something out of this in the end, at least.
people tend to get confused whenever this story comes up, so, just to clarify: the Pixel who worked on Steam Pilots is Hidekuni Sasaki, president of indie dev/events company Pixel Co. Ltd, and has absolutely nothing to do with Daisuke Amaya, Cave Story or anything else.
To elaborate a little more on Steam Pilots: Furukawa initially crowdfunded the game to the tune of ¥8M+ but could not complete the game due to the contracted developer walking out on him... which, as it turns out, was prompted by them learning about how he'd screwed over the dev of one of his previous indie project, Momoiro Underground, recognising the same warning signs in their own dealings with Furukawa and cutting ties while they could.
(The Momoiro Underground dev later reissued their game globally for Steam and Switch as Dezatopia, minus Furukawa's small contributions and with a big "this game has nothing to do with Motoaki Furukawa" disclaimer on all the trailers.)
Because both of these devs chose not to say anything publicly, Furukawa was able garner a lot of sympathy from other indie devs in the retro-adjacent scenes he ran in, as well as kick up hostility and doubt about his former collaborators. Sasaki of Pixel felt for his situation and agreed to come on board to bring the game to the finish line, and before long, Furukawa had him doing damn near everything: he was designing and programming the game all on his own and drawing virtually all of the pixel art and even designing most of the characters, with Shuzilow.HA's additional designs/illustrations and Furukawa's music being the only outside contributions (and as far as anyone knows, Furukawa hasn't written/recorded anything in years).
On top of everything else, Pixel wasn't been paid, as he'd agreed to withhold payment until the completion of the project, but given how the entire game had been dumped in his lap, he requested that Furukawa allowed him to contract another artist to help get the game over the line; Furukawa agreed, and ran a second crowdfunding campaign to fund the remainder of development, bringing in ~3M in additional funds.
Cut to two+ years later: Pixel publicly resigns, stating that he still hasn't been paid a cent for all his work, he has no idea what's going on with any of the money that came in and that he's taking all of his work with him unless Furukawa pays him what he's owed; he ended up taking Furukawa to court in seek of payment. Furukawa and his wife/business partner made some very non-specific commitments to finishing the game with yet another set of contractors, but in the ~18mo since the blow-up, they've given no real indication that the project is moving, become increasingly hostile and hard to contact and have started talking more and more shit about both Pixel and Shuzilow.HA, who has recently become more openly intolerant of Furukawa & co., especially once they locked down their accounts and started directly shit-talking him to their backers. (Shuzilow.HA and Pixel have and continue to work together on other games.)
Unfortunately for Pixel, most of his agreements with Furukawa were not made in writing, so nailing him down for anything specific has proved difficult and has allowed Furukawa to skate on all sorts of ridiculous arguments and throw frivolous counter-suits Pixel's way—at one point, Furukawa argued that none of the money he'd sourced from backers was specifically earmarked for financing the game and that it was merely requested for the extremely vague purposes of "risk mitigation", and Pixel shared an extremely gun-to-my-head statement (which has since been deleted) apologising for ever stating or implying that any of the money raised to fund Steam Pilots was ever supposed to go to paying the people making the game. Last I checked, Furukawa was trying to sue for emotional damages.
This has all been bubbling to a head over the last few weeks as people have tried and failed to coerce a sufficient response from Makuake, the crowdfunding platform, and as Furukawa & co. have made it increasingly difficult for any of their backers to contact them at all, let alone give them credible updates on what is or isn't happening with the game. Furukawa's ruined his own reputation in retro circles and has become one of go-to domestic examples of crowdfunding going wrong, and he doesn't seem to care.
(Incidentally, this all ties in to the potential impending expose on the making of Thunder Force VI—one of the many criticisms levelled against that game relates to Furukawa's contributions to the BGM, which were directly and unabashedly recycled from a CD of generic royalty-free music he'd released years earlier, and there's been some conjecture about whether Furukawa might have Tallarico'd em when they commissioned him for original tunes.)
After months of pressure from backers and evident hostility from Furukawa & co. towards providing any credible updates, the crowdfunding platform Makuake has finally intervened—despite their attempts to coerce something out of Furukawa, they've lost faith in his ability and/or intentions to deliver and are forcibly delivering refunds to those who apply for them, which people are interpreting both as some small justice for the backers but also a tacit admission from Furukawa & co. that they're never going to deliver the game they promised (and that they could have delivered if they'd paid the one guy who was actually doing all the work!).
The lawsuits between Hidekuni Sasaki of Pixel Co. Ltd and Furukawa are still ongoing, but one would hope this turn of events is going to swing things in their favour. Whatever the case, Furukawa's completely torched his own reputation and become the boogeyman for domestic crowdfunding, and even those closely involved with him struggle to understand why.
Pixel announced this game a while back (and I may have even mentioned it on here but can't locate the post), but it's worth mentioning in relationship to Steam Pilots... because, in all the ways that matter, it is Steam Pilots: Sasaki and Shuzilow.HA are very obviously reusing the work they produced for that game to make this one, and with this new trailer, they've announced that the audio's being handled by an assembly of veteran Konami composers (Yuji "TECHNOuchi" Takenouchi, Junya Nakano and Miki "MIKI-CHANG" Higashino, plus Raiden series composer Go Sato on sfx). Get fucked, Furukawa.
(The legal situation between Pixel and Furukawa is still ongoing, last I checked, but as far as I'm aware, Furukawa's just going through the motions and is basically just drawing things out for the sake of being an asshole, and has made virtually no public statements to their backers or anyone else.)